The Fall of Never(38)

Mendes cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “There’s nothing more that can be done for her here,” he said, “so she’s free to go home. I just…part of me is grateful that she’s leaving, and I don’t mean to sound heartless—”

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Yes,” Mendes agreed. “Yet there’s another part of me—the doctor in me, I guess, or even the concerned husband and father—that wants her to stay so I can keep an eye on her, learn more about her, and come to understand how she knew that about my son.”

Josh swallowed a lump of spit that tasted like motor oil. “Has it been confirmed?” he asked. “Do you know for certain it’s a boy?”

“No,” Mendes said. “Marie doesn’t want to know until she gives birth. Says it is bad luck to know.”

“Have you told your wife about any of this?” But he knew just from the expression on the doctor’s face that he hadn’t.

“No. How could I? What do I say? And aside from that, I think she’d believe it. Superstitions, right?”

“Believe it just like you believe it,” Josh said. “With two believing it instead of one, it makes it all the more likely that her prediction will come true.”

Mendes tightened his lips. For a second, Josh thought he’d offended the doctor. Then Mendes smiled and stood from behind his desk. “She is going to be released today. Again, you’re not obligated to—”

“I’m here,” Josh said.

“Then you’ll see to it that she makes it home? That she has everything she needs and that she can contact you if she needs to?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” Mendes reached down and pulled a card from his desk drawer, handed it to Josh. “My number is on there. My office number, but also my home and beeper number. I want you to call me if anything—anything—appears out of whack. Even if she starts talking in her sleep, you give me a call and I’ll come over ASAP.”

“I didn’t realize doctors still made house calls.”

Again, Mendes smiled that tired, weary smile. “Only the truly concerned ones do, Mr. Cavey.”

Yes, Josh thought, and the truly scared.



Dr. Carlos Mendes thought, What’s inside your head? What secrets do you know, and how in the world do you know them?

The old woman looked at peace in the bed, tucked beneath crisp white sheets. Some color had returned to her face and her eyes looked more alive now than they had since her admittance. She smiled warmly when he and Josh both entered the room. They smiled back and she tried to articulate something to them, but it came out as nonsense.

“Don’t get yourself all riled up, Miss Worthridge,” Mendes told her. He took her temperature, her blood-pressure, adjusted the sheets about her waist. She was thin, the poor old thing, and she watched him plod around the cramped little room like some ancient amphibian incapable of human thought. The notion was not a cruel one—it was merely reflexive, looking at her staring up at him, that half-smile following him around the room.

What do you know? he wondered. What great magic lies inside your sweet, silver head?

“You feel all right?” he asked her.

Nellie nodded once, emphatically. “Yes,” she said, slurring. “I said so this morning.” It was difficult for her to speak.

“You look better,” he told her. “You sound better.”

“I’m talking like a child.” Curiously enough, she said this perfectly clear.

“Nonsense. Can I see you flex the fingers of your right hand, please?”

She flexed them with no difficulty: opened, closed, opened, closed. But his eyes were hardly on them; he was busy looking at her left hand, the hand that lay motionless and curled into a bony talon on top of the bedclothes. That hand had moved too. Would she be able to move it now? And could he even ask her to do such a thing without making the request sound like a cruel joke? After all, the woman had no recollection of moving her left hand. To ask her to try now would be insensitive, crazy. It would begin to confirm too much in his own mind…

He checked her pupils and thought, If there is anything hiding behind these eyes, come out now! If there are any secrets stashed away back there, I insist you expose yourselves!

Josh stood on the other side of Nellie’s bed, looking down on her. “I’m going to get you home,” he told her. “You’ll feel better once you’re back at home.”

“Home,” the old woman muttered, still struggling to smile.

Mendes nodded, replaced his ophthalmoscope, and clapped his hands together in a gesture imitative of content finality. “Well, now,” he said. “You’re in good shape. Ready to get back into the daily grind, as far as I’m concerned.”

Her smile widened—it was a sorry state of affairs, really—and she reached out to him with her tangled right hand, patted him on the arm.

“You’re welcome,” he told her.

Five minutes later, he watched from the nurses’ station as Josh and Daphne, the floor nurse, pushed Nellie Worthridge out of her room in a wheelchair and into the bustle of the hallway. Nellie’s eyes, he noticed, darted around the hallway until they found him. Again, she smiled. It made him feel cold inside.